jmmcd

Karma: 757

jmmcd 1 Apr 2013 23:04 UTC
25 points
in reply to: Kindly’s comment on: Rationality Quotes April 2013
Oh god. Everyone stop talking.

jmmcd 3 Oct 2012 14:02 UTC
25 points
on: Taking “correlation does not imply causation” back from the internet
A discussion I had in the reddit comments on that Slate post made me invent this fake argument:

A: People who drink water inevitably end up dead. Therefore drinking water causes death.

B: No, that is correlation, not causation.

C: No, it is not correlation. To calculate correlation you divide the covariance of the two variables by the variance of each of the variables. In this case there is no variance in either variable, so you’re dividing by zero, so correlation is not even defined.

I think it’s an improvement to go from saying “there is obviously something wrong with A’s argument” to actually being able to point out the divide-by-zero in the equation.

jmmcd 20 Jan 2012 15:04 UTC
22 points
on: Crocker’s Rules: How far to take it?
I don’t know or care whether someone I’m talking to online has declared Crocker’s rules. I’m still going to attempt to be polite.

Crocker’s rules are an oddity. The LW wiki’s declaration that they are “a rationality enhancing technique” strikes me as an example of Vulcan rationality.

jmmcd 13 Nov 2010 0:00 UTC
22 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Rational responses to potential home invasion threat?

Being a Russian [...] Nobody ever won a war by defending.

What the..?! As a first approximation, you beat Napolean and Hitler by defending.

relevant?#Vizzini)

jmmcd 26 Jan 2012 15:48 UTC
17 points
on: The Substitution Principle
Ok brain, I’m going to ask you a question. I’m not going to say what it is yet. But before you answer, I want you to promise not to use System 1! Got it? Ok here goes: what career should I choose?

“Academia”

No you idiot, that was too fast!

jmmcd 16 Jun 2011 3:50 UTC
17 points
in reply to: AlphaOmega’s comment on: Q&A with Jürgen Schmidhuber on risks from AI
Right, but the point is not for us to learn whether AI is an existential risk. The point is to find out whether mainstream academic AI people (and others) think it is. It’s an attitudes survey, not a fact-finding mission.

jmmcd 14 Oct 2010 22:50 UTC
16 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Mixed strategy Nash equilibrium

This stuff is like arithmetic: one right answer, nothing to argue about.

Under the assumption of universal rationality. Without that assumption (which would not be fulfilled in a real fantasy sword-fighting game), the best strategy/mixed strategy does not correspond to the Nash equilibrium, and there remains plenty to argue about.

What happens when some percentage of people are picking randomly, some people are “stylin”, and some people are performing “misinformed” calculations and/or simulations? The fact that some people actually did the latter shows that the effect must be taken into account.

jmmcd 6 Apr 2011 15:05 UTC
15 points
in reply to: bentarm’s comment on: Comic endorsing Bayesian statistics
Comic endorsing Bonferroni corrections!

jmmcd 18 Mar 2011 13:10 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Nornagest’s comment on: Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter
For the record, saying “cult alert” might not constitute an accusation, but rather “you need to watch your PR”.

jmmcd 7 Dec 2010 4:16 UTC
12 points
in reply to: ShardPhoenix’s comment on: Less Wrong: Open Thread, December 2010
It’s interesting as a “just for fun” idea. On some blogs it would probably be fine, but OB used to feel a lot more rigorous, important, and multiple levels above me, than it does now.

jmmcd 14 Jun 2010 21:20 UTC
12 points
in reply to: AShepard’s comment on: How to always have interesting conversations

You don’t chit-chat about the weather because you really want to consider how recent local atmospheric patterns relate to long-run trends, you do it to show that you care about the other person.

No, you chat about the weather because it allows both parties to become comfortable and pick up the pace of the conversation to something more interesting. Full-on conversations don’t start in a vacuum. In a worst case scenario, you talk about the weather because it’s better than both of you staring at the ground until someone else comes along.

jmmcd 14 Nov 2012 9:51 UTC
11 points
on: Instrumental rationality for overcoming disability and lifestyle failure (a specific case)
There are lots of blind people who are independently mobile and gainfully employed and you can become one of them. I don’t know where they acquire the skills you say you lack. Maybe the AFB, which you mentioned, has advice on how to go about gaining suitable employment and training yourself in the basics like mobility?

You should finish your degree. Degrees are useful for getting jobs. They let the employer know that you finished something you started and avoid having a 4-year hole in your CV. If akrasia is stopping you from “writing on demand”, then I guess LW has some stuff about akrasia, but as a first approximation, just do it.

jmmcd 14 Feb 2012 20:07 UTC
11 points
on: On What Selves Are—CEV sequence

yelling historically at someone in the phone

I’M TELLING YOU HE ALREADY KNEW THE EARTH WAS ROUND

(hysterically)

jmmcd 28 Feb 2015 1:42 UTC
10 points
in reply to: advancedatheist’s comment on: In memory of Leonard Nimoy, most famous for playing the (straw) rationalist Spock, what are your top 3 ST:TOS episodes with him?
I think it’s a bit of a leap to go from NASA being under-funded and unambitious in recent years to “people 50 years from now, in a permanently Earth-bound reality”.

jmmcd 1 Jul 2012 21:53 UTC
10 points
on: The Fiction Genome Project
I think the Music Genome project is misleadingly-named. A genome is generative: there is a mapping from a genome to an organism. There is no reverse mapping. In the case of music, there is a reverse mapping from a piece of music to these 400 odd features, but there’s no forward mapping.

And that misleading name has indeed misled the person who suggests using the detective novel features as a generative representation. They’re not generative. They’re just observed features. It’s a useful distinction to keep in mind.

jmmcd 19 Jan 2012 23:19 UTC
10 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: The Singularity Institute’s Arrogance Problem
But I don’t get it. You asked for examples and XiXiDu gave some. You can judge whether they were good or bad examples of arrogance. Asking whether the examples qualify under another, different criterion seems a bit defensive.

Also, several of the examples were of the form “I was tempted to say X” or “I thought Y to myself”, so where does truth or falsity come into it?

jmmcd 22 Jul 2013 10:44 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Stuart_Armstrong’s comment on: Gains from trade: Slug versus Galaxy—how much would I give up to control you?
It is the fundamental theorem of linear programming.

jmmcd 11 May 2013 12:57 UTC
9 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The mystery of pain and pleasure
I think you’re right that the OP doesn’t quite hit the mark, but you got carried away and started almost wilfully misinterpreting. Especially your answers to 4, 5 and 6.

jmmcd 8 Nov 2012 23:24 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Kindly’s comment on: Checklist of Rationality Habits

you should only ever take logs of a dimensionless quantity

Goddammit I have a degree in mathematics and no-one ever told me that and I never figured it out for myself.

I see the beginnings of an explanation here [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/7668/fundamental-question-about-dimensional-analysis]. Any pointer to better explanation?

jmmcd 23 Feb 2011 5:50 UTC
9 points
on: Dawkins and Dennett defend Adaptationism [Links]
Lewontin link is EntirelyWrong.